


Bad Blood

by pylsur



Category: Preacher (Comics), Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, New Orleans, Sad sick vampire, Sickfic, Unholy Road Trip, Vampires, dying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pylsur/pseuds/pylsur
Summary: He will feel like a bleedin’ idiot later – in between the hallucinations and hemorrhaging – because these days its not exactly hard. The signs, as they were, are no longer things only overheard in the right circles or nasty little things witnessed in their unfurling.He really has no excuse for fucking up as badly as he does.Or, Cassidy isn’t paying attention to anything but them and makes a miserable mistake, one that might just finally kill him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a purely self indulgent exercise as I wait for Preacher to come back in June. I live in New Orleans and get to watch filming (i.e. try to find a way around the streets they're closing down, and watch them try to manage Bourbon Street) frequently. 
> 
> Haven't written fic in ages - sorry if its absolute crap, ya'll.

 

Had he been paying attention, had he been a little more aware of the world outside of _them_ _,_ he might have caught on and recognized the signs. He might have been more _careful._

He _will_ feel like a bleedin’ idiot later – in between the hallucinations and hemorrhaging – because these days its not exactly _hard._ The signs, as they were, are no longer things only overheard in the right circles or nasty little things witnessed in their unfurling. 

The moment between _awareness_ and _too late_ is no longer thread thin.

Newspapers aren’t hard to come by, no matter where you are, and, if he were so inclined to blame this all on his still dodgy reading skills, he still can’t deny the twenty-four hour televised news cycle. There is no hiding from the happenings of the world around you – not anymore.

He really has no excuse for fucking up as badly as he does.

 

* * *

 

_But._

But for the first time in a long time - _decades_ – he is happy, or, whatever passes for it these days.

His guard is down far more often than it should be. Not every clean-cut shite is a vampire hunting religious vigilante, which is a nice reprieve. He doesn’t have to worry about the daytime hours on his lonesome – he’s nearly got sun bodyguards with the way they keep an eye on it.

It’s more than that, though, and he knows it. He hardly looks further than the people in front of him, but who could blame him – they’re a fantastic sight those two are, Jesse and Tulip. 

He knows he falls easy and hard. Worse, he knows he’s a damned cliché – a vampire in love. 

Fuck’s sake. 

 

* * *

 

He drains a man dry in Shreveport.

He’s never made a habit of it; it’s hard work once the heart stops beating and, unless he’s been injured or is feeling particularly spiteful, he doesn’t require so much. But, luck would have it – he’s injured _and_ he’s spiteful.

 _And_ he’s a bit peckish. It’s a perfect storm.

The man lets out a half-gargled scream, claws at his face, and he bites down _harder_ , deeper into his muscle, to the bone. He makes it hurt more, because the filthy gobshite deserves it.

Neither Jesse nor Tulip stop him because they’d been part of the bar fight gone sour. Jesse had seen the man raise his knife at Tulip’s back, and Tulip had turned just in time to realize it was too close to avoid. Cassidy had been just quick enough to catch the end of the knife in his _palm_ ; it had gone through with painless ease and had dragged a long bloody, ugly stroke to his wrist.

So, no, they don’t feel at all inclined to stop him or show even a modicum of mercy. 

Instead, Jesse commands the man’s drinking mates to _forget_ and to _run_ ; then they watch his back without watching anything else.

The man is still alive, crying and whimpering; he is dying slowly. It’s not like the way they depict it in movies or television. From what Cassidy has observed, there’s nothing sensual or meditative about it, there’s nothing to it that renders the victim into a trance or unconscious. They go on living until they don’t and sometimes it's a drawn out hell. 

He drinks and drinks, even as something in the back of his mind – something instinctive and intelligent – warns him about the overly salty taste, about the texture. He ignores it because the man’s blood also carries the bitter tang of cocaine and the knife he’d tried to plant in Tulip’s back gleams at him from under the alley lights, red with his own blood.

When he’s done he takes a deep breath – he often forgoes breathing all together when this far gone in a feeding – and lets the corpse drop to the ground like the wasted sack of shit it is.

His mouth is coated with the grainiest blood he’s tasted in recent memory; it’s the kind he normally would have forgone, the kind riddled with cancer or some other nasty thing. He hadn’t noticed how truly awful it had tasted through the haze of his near feral rage and bloody hell, he _knows_ he’s going to have a stomachache later.

“Tasted like shite, that.” He complains as he stands over the corpse and smacks his mouth, desperate to get the taste out.

“Like wine gone bad?” Jesse says with a chuckle, despite the scene before them; its become par for the course. The three of them, a dead body or two, a joke thrown in for the sake of being sacrilegious assholes. 

“Sure, if y’ then put shite in it.” He turned to the side, spat, made a sound of disgust as he rounded the body, grabbing at the man’s shoulders. Jesse is edging around, going for the feet.

“You two are disgusting.” She says in the same breath as, “thanks, Cass. Can’t believe this moron got behind me like that.”

She quirks her lips and shakes her head as if disappointed. 

“Oh, well –“ Cassidy groans as they lift the man’s body, shuffle over to the dumpster and toss him in. “don’t beat your self up about it. He got ‘is.”

“Yes, he did.” Jesse’s tone is grim, low and – truly, they are all going to hell – satisfied. As Jesse writes it, the man deserved it. 

“Seriously, you alright?” Jesse asks her as he pulls her in, tucks her neatly under one arm; Tulip rolls her eyes but doesn’t pull away. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.”

“Ugh –“ Cassidy spits again. Tulip wrinkles her nose. Jesse looks part disgusted, part amused.

“Seriously, mate, ‘m not jokin’ –“ There’s blood still coating the inside of his mouth and on his chin; now that this mess is behind him – or rather, _in a dumpster_ – he can smell that its _off._ “Gonna need a whole pub to wash that wanker down –“

Jesse starts laughing immediately and Cassidy sputters.

“No, no, don’t be a cheeky shite –“

“Welll , boys–“ Tulip steps forward, through their conversation and over a slick of blood – Jesse, he walks through it - and plants the hand not around Jesse’s waist, on her hip. “Would ya look at that.”

She smiles and tilts her head, looks up at the ratty sign on the alley door that just says ‘Bar Employees Only’.

They stand there for a moment in silence, contemplating the wisdom in returning to the bar they had _just_ left in order to have a bit of a brawl, one that had resulted in homicide.

“It’s still early, y’know?” Cassidy says, which compliments nicely with Jesse’s, “I wasn’t done anyway.”

With the decision made, Jesse offers Cassidy his other arm.

The night goes on and they all end up happily wasted and, much later, squeezed onto the smallest bed ever to have legally been sold as a queen. They’re a mess of limbs and it’s too hot to really be comfortable, but Tulip is tucked neatly between the two men, Cassidy’s face smashed into her hair and Jesse’s in his. One of Cassidy’s long legs is stretched across both of them. 

It’s easy to forget one bad meal amongst all that.

 

* * *

 

They’re at _another_ bloody diner and if Cassidy hadn’t seen angels, Genesis, seraphim and a bloody Heaven phone with his own eyes, he’d think he’d been duped into some kind of diner obsessed road trip. Texans, it would seem, fucking _love_ their diners.

He doesn’t order anything and instead settles for watching Jesse and Tulip eat with vigor, despite the fact that the waitress coughed heavily into her elbow as she settled the plates and sounded miserably nasal when she tossed the check at them.

“Charmin’, that. Alright.” He says as the check flutters to the floor; the waitress gives him the finger as she hacks and sputters her way back to the kitchen.

“Nothing for you, Cass?” Jesse asks through a full mouth of cheeseburger. Cassidy is, surprisingly, without an appetite.

He _did_ do a decent amount of drinking the night before. And cocaine. And … something else, his memory is a bit fuzzy on that one.

“Watchin’ me figure.” 

“What figure is that? Thin as a beanstalk?” Tulip grins as she pops a French-fry into her mouth.

“I’ll have you know, this look,” he gestures to himself with exaggerated flourish, “has remained desirable throughout the past hundred years.”

“Uh-huh. Left something to be desired is more like it.” She gives him a wicked look, and then her eyes soften, just like that, all contrarian to the statement. 

Bloody hell, she’s a sight.

“And you,” Tulip points at Jesse with her fork; a piece of pancake flies of and lands on the space between their plates, “gotta lay off the bacon.”

“Oh, she’s right there, Padre. Gettin’ flabby –“ Cassidy grins, thinking over the image of how _not_ flabby the man is.

Jesse makes an affronted sound and launches a piece of limp bacon in Tulip’s direction, knocks his weight against the vampire’s and tells him to fuck off.

Cassidy _loves_ it. 

He sinks into the seat a bit and lets himself melt into the warm wall that is Jesse’s body.  Tulip’s feet are on his lap - the seats had been just a bit too far for her to span and she’d planted her heels just above his knees as though he were an extension of the booth – but he’s not complaining.

They’re two little points of pressure that feel strangely comforting and every so often they move back in forth to the rhythm of her chewing. He’s almost sure she has no idea she’s doing it and its fucking adorable. 

They’re still talking, _bickering_ more like, and he finds himself content to just sit and listen, Tulip’s feet still happily rocking back and forth, and Jesse’s warm presence ebbing into him  – 

\- and then something is poking gently at his shoulder.

He startles a little more violently than he should – he flinches away from the sensation at his side, flails a bit, yelps “Jaysis!”; a proper show - but he’s not in the habit of being poked into consciousness because when the fucking hell had he closed his eyes?

He blinks, clears his vision and looks at the pair; his eyes feel scratchy and he scrubs his hand across his face. He feels like he’d just slept a full night’s worth.

“We bore you that bad, Cass?” Jesse looks amused as Tulip takes a long sip of her coffee; her body is leaned forward as she eyes him and he realizes with a sad tug that the warm pressure of her heels are gone.

“Never, padre. A regular Abbot and Costello, you two are.” The vampire digs the heal into his hand, stretches noisily, grunting and groaning as his joints pop, “’M thinkin’  I might still be on the wrong end o’all tha’ from last night.”

He gives them a rogueish grin as he settles back down, wishes Tulip would place her dainty little heels back on his knees.

“Hmm.” Tulip rolls her eyes and Jesse shakes his head, though he’s grinning back now, too, the idiot.

It’s the only proper explanation. He’s had some impressive highs and some even more impressive crashes but, typically, it takes _a lot_ and though the previous night had been something special, it hadn’t been heroin-and-whiskey-and-jumping-off-the-Space-Needle kind of special.

And he hadn’t needed a _kip_ after that either.

“Was it the coke or the shrooms?” Tulip says, her tone manages to call him an idiot without actually saying it.

“Ha! Shrooms, that was it!” He shouts a little too loudly; half the diner turns to look and he waves them off, tells a particularly snobbish-looking older lady to mind her own when she wont look away.

“Gettin’ old, Cass?” Jesse teases as he finishes off that greasy stack of bacon. 

“Ho, be careful there. It’s a sensitive topic, that.” He snorts, feigns hurt. His first instinct is to laugh but, hell, he is feeling it for once. Old, that is. Tired. _Off_.

But that’s fine because Tulip sits back and he’s again her ottoman, and Jesse tosses his napkin on the plate and leans back, places an arm behind him, around his shoulders.

 

* * *

 

He starts out as he always does when things are taking a bad turn and he doesn’t want to deal with it, to believe it: in denial.

As a vampire he is blessedly free from the torments of bodily illness.  It’s one of the _advantages_ of his condition, something he’d been happy to proclaim when Jesse had caught that god-awful flu and then had given it to a very unhappy Tulip. Those had been three _very_ unpleasant weeks and he’d been a target for much of their ire. 

The chills creeping up his spine and trying to make him shudder like a human with a cold are there because he hasn’t fed, _really_ fed in a while. Though that’s not right – the man in Shreveport had been pure gluttony and he’d had that poor alley cat a few days back, a somewhat desperate attempt to get the still there taste out of his mouth.

The terrible scratching, gnawing ache at the back of his throat is from the smoking and the drinking and nights spent out, even though that has literally never happened. _Ever._

The pain in the back of his eyes and head is the sun, sat up there, brutal, hot and unwavering in annoyingly blue skies. It’s never been a problem before but he’s also never travelled this land – Louisiana, as it were - _that extensively_ _,_ and then he remembers living in _Vegas_.

But it’s all good and well when they pull into the third shittiest looking bar of the past few days because really, he just needs a drink.

And it _does_ take the edge off. The scratch in his throat is sufficiently numb and the pain behind his eyes turns into warmth and a vague sort of fogginess. It’s a bit of a relief, though he hadn’t been all that bothered, and it’s all back to normal operating procedure – piss drunk, arms slung over the preacher, a fag shared between them three – until some absolute nob feels the need to spoil it.

A tap on the shoulder, he turns, and then _crack_ – it’s a terrific punch, a real wrecker, busts his nose as easy as anything. He even tumbles off the stool.

 He has absolutely no idea _why_ it had happened, though he suspects, as he listens to the shouting, it has something to do with the way his hands had groped at Jesse’s ass. He pops up, not as daisy-fresh as he’d like, but he’s up and raring and they find themselves in yet another tussle that gets them thrown out.

Without the proprietors favor and a room full of scared but innocent locals, they accept the end result and brush themselves off as they leave.

They make it to the car and Tulip – more sober than she’d want to be after all that - whirls around to warn them against throwing up or bleeding in her car when her brow pinches together.

“Jesus, Cass – bastard hit you that hard?” Jesse steps away – the warm mass of support vanishing, leaving a chill in the vampire’s side – and squints at him under the harsh lights of the parking lot.

“’s still bleedin’ –“ Jesse assesses, ever the one to state the obvious when absolutely obliterated. 

Cassidy sniffs; he _had_ been wondering about that warm sticky sensation trailing its way under his shirt and down his chest.

“Id’l heal.” He rasps in a nasally tone.

But he’s still sniffling as they rocket down the highway. His nose is still sluggishly bleeding when Jesse rings the crummy bell at the motel counter and when Tulip says screw it and leans over the counter and snatches a pair of keys for room number 12.

It still bleedin’ _hurts_ when they make their way into their shitty pilfered room and when Tulip tosses him a questionably stained hand towel from the bathroom and tells him to _sit, now_ on the edge of the bed.

“What, like a dog?” He says, but it comes out a bit garbled and he ends up complying without any real fight. The mattress sinks even lower, groans against the affront to its springs, as Jesse sits beside him, stares at him.

“Head down.” Tulip says as she leans into the vampire, pushes the back of his head so his chin snaps to his chest.

“No, ‘s head back.” Jesse interjects, glances up at her and then back at Cass, watching as the towel takes on more red then it should by now.

“No, it ain’t, Jesse.”  They argue for a moment and Cassidy thinks about interjecting and letting Jesse know that he is in fact wrong and that’s why he pukes blood when he gets a bloody nose – the man, bless him, could be thick sometimes.

But he keeps his trap shut because he’s learned not to take sides. Not unless it benefits him, of course. Well, or, not unless he wants to see the way Tulip mouth quirks in that _pout before she punches him_ , or the way Jesse’s brow furrows making him look like a kicked puppy.

Point is, he’s not going to argue over it.

He listens to Tulip – of course – and mumbles a complaint into the towel, sniffs and then coughs. A glob of blood runs down his throat.

“Bloo’y ‘ell.” His face is throbbing, as a broken nose would, _should_ , and he only just begins to feel the pins and needles of knitting flesh. It’s terribly slow going and it isn’t until Jesse pats him on the back and hands him a _second_ towel that the bleeding actually stops.

“Jesus, Cass. Your face.” Jesse mutters as he leans in; he goes as far to grab his chin. The man is a rather handsy bastard when he’s pissed, but Cassidy isn’t complaining.

“Looks as bad as it feels, does it?” He knows they’ve seen worse, that this wound would hardly warrant any sympathy beyond ice and a drink, _but_ , they’ve also seen him heal from worse, _much worse_ , in a sixteenth of the time this had taken to stop _bleeding._

“You’re all bruised up, gonna have raccoon eyes.” The man’s hand migrates to his cheek, his thumb tracing, lightly as all, the bruise Cassidy can feel. Its tender and he almost winces.

“You okay?” Jesse asks, very seriously. It would be funny – adorable, even – if it weren’t for the tightly knit brow and the worry lines around his mouth.

“Oh, c’mon now, ‘s jus’ a bloo’y nose, innit?” 

“Why ain’t it healing?” Tulip asks, arms crossed, as if its _his_ fault.

“Wish I knew, lub.” It comes out garbled and he can taste his own blood in his mouth and hell, there is nothing satiating about his own brand.

Jesse probes a little too hard and Cassidy pulls back, curses. Jesse, the shite, laughs at him.

“What, you want me to kiss it better.” He’s grinning, the worry drained from his voice.

“Noo –“ He leans back with a grin, directs his best version of puppy-dog eyes at Tulip; she looks as though she’s caught between exasperation and interest. Her brows lift making those gorgeous eyes bigger.

“I want both of yez to.” He smiles, grins more like and is rewarded with an eye-roll and a smile.

It’s easy to forget a busted nose – which is mostly healed by morning - with all this.

 

* * *

 

Then …

He coughs up blood at a bar. 

And, hell, it’s when they’re doing actual work. 

They’re on Bourbon Street questioning innocent, drunk folk about God. Far too serious for these likes, he thinks, but Cassidy isn’t complaining. 

He’s chatting up some young, pretty things, leaned over the counter, suave-like, when coughs up _blood._

He can’t blame them for leaving, immediately, and he hardly notices because what the bloody hell is this now? He reaches over the counter, steals a sticky bottle of Sazerac and takes a heaping swig.

He comes up coughing, again, and finishes the bottle. It numbs his throat just enough but his mouth tastes like blood gone bad and he can feel a dribble of it slip down his chin.

He must look a frightening fucking sight because suddenly there is no one around and he’s being asked to leave, forcefully, by the bartender who’d been ignoring him the whole time.

He puts his hands up and backs away, steals a beer from someone’s table before he goes. He drinks and wanders and coughs up more blood and …

… he wakes up in an alley on Frenchmen in a literal garbage heap with the sunlight three inches from his face.

Bonus: the urge to cough has returned.

He figures he’s lucky that he looks like no other drunk or bum, that no one in New Orleans would bat an eye at a skinny, sickly, tattoo’d bloke stumbling out of a trash pit and into the merciful, hallowed doors of a too-dark bar.

He takes a booth, needs a moment to collect himself. He needs a moment to try and remember where they’ve been shacked for the time being because he’s clueless and at a loss. He needs a fucking moment to figure out _what the fuck_ is happening to him. 

It’d be nice, that.

 

* * *

 

 

Now, there are three possible explanations here.

One: Day of the Dead. He’s a zombie, transitioning-like, falling apart and all that.

Two: The Vampire Diaries. He’s turning human and his body is catching up to the absolute shite he’s put it through.

Or, three, and it's the least likely: he’s dying.

He let’s out an amused huff as he lights his cigarette – tobacco and the coppery tang of blood fill his lungs – until, suddenly, it isn’t very funny.

_Shite._

Followed by a resounding –

_Fuuuck._

 

* * *

 

 

 

Jesse nearly gets brained by a bottle of Jack. Those are proper hard bottles, absolute skull splitters, so even though it only glances off his temple it still gives him a two inch gash and knocks him unconscious for a moment that stretches a little too long.

Tulip howls.

Cassidy loses his shit. Beats a bloke with a mullet to a bloody pulp. Breaks his own damn hand. Gets stabbed by mullet’s buddy and then beats him just as badly, worse.

It’s Tulip that pulls him off, with a tug. Jesse is leaning against the bar, hand on his head with a pained grimace on his face, but he’s alive. 

It takes a long while for Cassidy to calm himself. He’s irritable the entire walk to the shotgun they’ve haggled down to nothing and he’s _hungry._

He figures that’s why his hand doesn’t heal, why his stab wound sluggishly bleeds into another ruined shirt.

It’s not like the bloody nose. He’s not up for Tulip’s administrations, not that she notices, this time, and once they’re tucked in, nice and cozy, crammed into another inadequate bed, he takes off to find some deserving shite to feed off.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later he returns with a stomach full of Mr. Mullet’s blood. Nothing has changed except for the fact that the man is dead and the burn in his throat has been satiated.

He’s still irritated, he still has a broken hand and he still has a bloody stab wound in his side.

He lurches a bit when his toe catches a rock – a fucking _rock_ – and he catches himself on the hood of a car, their car. No one stirs inside and he thinks he’s gotten away with it, lets himself sink down against the front, ass in the dirt.

Cassidy groans and stares out at the run down street, Tchopitoulas. He presses a hand against his side and winces when he feels the warm pulse of blood. It might as well be a fresh wound.

Number three, then.

“Shite.” 

A genuine swell of … panic rises in his gut. He has a good thing going here. A real _good_ thing.

“Cass.” 

Cassidy jerks, and fuck, why do people keep sneaking upon him like that? The pair of them get a rise out of it, love how easy it is to catch him unawares.

“But, Jaysis! I’ve told y’ to quit doin’ that!” Any hope of waiting the night out in peace is blown right away when Tulip sits down next to him, right there in the dirt.

“You startle real easy, Cass. Thought vampires had good hearing.”

“Sense of smell, and sight, maybe. Hearing, no.”

“Huh.”

“Huh.” He mimics, tries to hide the tremor in his busted left hand and occupies the other with his vape mod. He takes a hit, stares ahead.

There’s the sharp snap of a lighter as she drags a long breath on a cigarette; he can feel her side eyeing him all the while.

“How’s Jess?” He knows she’s not stupid – not even close – and that she’s likely to see right through his attempt to move the conversation away from himself. Though, he does want to know.

“He’s fine. Sleepin’. _Snorin’._ ”

“Ha. Is he?” They’ve sat awake staring at Jesse in disbelief over the sounds he was capable of making. It’s kept them both up more than they’d want. Mostly Tulip.

A boat horn rattles off somewhere downstream. It makes the silence that follows feel all the more abrupt.

“He’s had way worse than that.” After a pause, she adds: “You know that.”

He does. Something in him had snapped, the same something that contributed to the impressive girth of the manila folder. Something feral and terrible and usually more under control.

“Right. Good.” He says while letting out a large breath of vapor. It makes him cough, unexpected and fucks sake, though. 

“Ok, cut the shit, Cassidy. What the hell is goin’ on?” Her voice has dipped into something low and guttural, the tone she takes when she’s had enough.

“Nothin’! Nothin’ is goin’ on –“ He moans; he’s tired and not up for this at the moment.

“Oh, bullshit!” Her expression turns into something fed up and angry; he’s been on the end of it often enough to know. She’s staring at him, waiting, daring him to test her patience. If there’s one think Tulip O’Hare isn’t, it’s patient.

“It’s, I’ve got it under control. I’m dealin’ with it, alright?”

“With _what_? Cass, with _what_ exactly?” With _what_ is right. He’s not sure about that one nor is he willing to spin a yarn; he’s sick, or he’s dying, or he’s nothing at all.

“Nothin’, Tulip, alright? ‘M bein’ serious now, get off it.”

“Don’t be a prick, Cassidy.” She spits back, all venom this time. They’ll wake Jesse if they keep going at it and the last thing he needs right now is the two of them buggering him for information.

He’s tired. He’s in pain. He’s pissed and, fucks sake, he might be dying and he doesn’t want to talk about it.

She pulls at his elbow and he looks at her, proper, in the eyes, for the first time since she’s sat down next to him. Usually those big brown eyes would make him melt, would soften him and make him forget what he’s arguing over. But now …

“Is this a vampire thing? What do we –“

“Jaysis, how many – look, ‘m not jokin’. There’s no we, there’s no vampire thing, there’s nothin’, just feckin’ nothin’!”

“I’m just tryin’ to help you, asshole!”

“I didn’t ask fer y’ t’ help, Tulip! So, just, just fuck off, will ya?” Its not until he’s said it all that he realizes he’s been shouting at her, that he’s been pointing his finger in her face.

He watches as her mouth turns into a small, firm line. 

He watches as her expression hardens, as her eyes go _cold_.

“Fuck you, Cassidy.” Her voice is low, disgusted. She finishes the cig, stubs it out on the ground. He doesn’t watch her leave but he hears her nearly slam the door, _knows_ that she crawls back into the bed, Jesse tucked into her side.

His side aches. He could use a drink.

 

* * *

 

He should leave.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He can feel himself slipping and when he slips – well, boyo, no one wants to see the aftermath.

He should leave but he hasn’t the energy, honest. 

He should leave but he’s a bleedin’ coward.

He’s back on Bourbon, lifting drinks, trading beads for tits, scrounging cheap drugs from cheaper people, getting into rows.

It’s all well and good until _he_ shows up. Nosy shite.

“Cass –“

“Oh, not you, too, Padre.” He mutters miserably into a glass – a proper glass – of whiskey. He coughs, a low throaty pain in his throat; it would sound like, seem like, a cold if it weren’t for the blood.

He has no idea how the man had tracked him down but it couldn’t have been too hard. New Orleans isn’t very big, let alone Bourbon Street, and he’s been told he’s rather … predictable, a real man of his vices.

“Cass, look at me.” He doesn’t. He takes another miserable sip.

“Look at me, damnit.” He’s sure they’re attracting attention now, he bets it looks a lot like a lover’s quarrel. Ha.

“ **Look at me.”** He does, because he _has_ to. It's the easiest anything has been in the past weeks; it requires no energy, no intention, it requires absolutely nothing of him.

Still, he’s fucking angry.

Later, he’ll come to understand that if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own shit, in escaping, he might have noticed that Jesse – and Tulip, bless her – were trying to help.

But later is later, and he’s an absolute fuck up, so he takes a bloody swing.

 

* * *

 

Cassidy opens his eyes and is immediately assaulted by the image of a very pissed looking Jesse.

“What the hell, Cassidy?” His ears ring and he feels all sorts of confused, though not unpleased by the man’s proximity.

But then, there it is, the memory of the night before, of Jesse using the voice, him taking that wild, shite swing.

And, worse, that worried furrow and the tight lines of his eyes. But Jesus, he hasn’t had anyone worry over him this much, let alone _two_ people; not since Billy or his Ma.

“Wha –“ He tries, though he _truly_ feels shite. Every bit of abuse that his body has suffered and failed to heal makes itself known. He feels like, well, the closest thing he can compare it to is the turn; the ache, the burn, the consuming pain and the sensation that something was, is, very wrong.

Option number fucking three.

He manages to get himself on his elbows, gives the room a quick once over. He doesn’t recognize it. At all. Which means he’s missed some time.

“Shite.” He mutters and winces; his own stupid voice sets his head to pounding.

“Yeah. Shit.” The man says, doesn’t affect his pronunciation as he usually would, all in an effort to poke fun. He sounds about as angry as he looks. Cass can’t help but look away, resists the urge to curl up in the bed because he’s still tired and doesn’t want to be the subject of ire.

He doesn’t need to ask. Jesse, with his Kung Fu moves, had likely bested him with little effort. He can’t imagine that it had been any fucking harder than fighting off a pool noodle – his limbs had been lead-heavy, his energy null.

There’s a long silence and Jesse takes pity on him.

“When the hell were you gonna tell us you’d stopped healing?” There’s a bloody patch seeping through his shirt. He can feel it dripping down his side, into the sheets. 

His hand, the busted one, still hurts like a cunt; he can feel it twitch and shake with the smallest provocation. 

“I-I T’ought I had a handle on it, okay?” He lets out weakly.

“Is this having a handle on it?” Jesse gestures at all of him, laid out in the bed like an invalid. He has a point, he does.

“Well, I didn’t t’ink it was a problem, at first.” It’s not really a lie, because he’d been sure he could carry on, that he’d just gone a bit overboard with the drugs and that, that he hadn’t fed enough …

Jesse looks unconvinced. And guilty … bloody hell.

“Jess. Jesse. Honest, I didn’t.” 

“Yeah, well, you look like shit.”

“Careful there, flattery’ll get you everywhere.” He grins and it does the trick; Jesse chuckles, rolls his eyes, offers him his hand. He pulls him up into a sitting position, steadies him as he gets his feet over the edge of the bed.

Jesse sits down next to him; Cassidy can just make out light bruising on his knuckles. _Right_. 

“’M sorry I t’rew a punch at y’. Wasn’t at me best, there.”

“Wasn’t much of a punch, Cass.” Jesse laughs and it's a relieving thing, a nice thing, even though he’s surely recalling what an easy knockout it had been. “Don’t worry about it.”

Cassidy scoffs, manages not to cough up a lung like he feels may happen if he moves or talks or blinks anymore than he’s already doing.

“Well don’t go soilin’ me good name. Keep it t’ yourself.”

“Not sure I can. Had to carry your skinny ass out of that shithole.” Well, if that isn’t embarrassing – but Casiddy has loads of experience with embarrassing; though, being carried out of a bar, bridal style (he imagines) by a handsome preacher is a new one.

“Brought me cross the threshold and all?” It’s an ugly threshold – the wood is showing through the stucco, half rotted, and there’s rat shit everywhere.

“Don’t worry, I was gentle.” Cassidy laughs honest at that.

“I doubt that, Padre.” He clears his throat, ignores the side-eye it attracts.  He decides to address the elephant in the room. “Where’s Tulip, then?” 

He’s not seen her going two or three days now.

“Blowin’ off steam.” He almost sounds sorry, probably because he knows what the vampire is in for when she returns.

“Right. Suspect that's my fault.”

“Yep. Said you were bein’ a prick, told me to go find you and kick your ass for her.”

“Well, you done good there.”

“She’s worried, Cass.”

“I know.”

“So, what are we gonna do about this?” Jesse says, dead serious now.

“ _That_ I don’t know.”

Another bout of silence.

 

* * *

 

Tulip returns and when Cassidy opens the door to her, white as a ghost, gaunt, sickly looking, dried blood on his lips from an aggressive bought of coughing that had had Jesse texting at light speed, she slaps him.

Then she pushes a bucket of blood at him. His senses are off kilter and he can’t tell what kind it is.

“You gotta eat somethin’, you idiot.”

All things considered, he gets off light.

They leave the dump on Tchopitoulas and he thinks that maybe this thing is passing, that maybe it’s on its way out of his system. 

He drinks the slop Tulip brings him and feels slightly better. He tolerates a day being driven around, looking for God and all that shite. A real Miss Daisy, he is. 

And then …

… then it gets much worse.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s on fire. Or, at least, he feels like he is. His body is hot, itchy, feels like one of them thick, itchy, woolen jumpers his Ma would make him wear. He wants to tear his own skin off, _shed it_.

And Jaysis, it’s already hot – the air has taken on a suffocating stillness and the humidity is unbearable, clingy, even this early in the morning.

He’s waiting, though for what he doesn’t remember. Or, he’s on the lookout. Is that right? He shakes his head, blinks hard, tries to reorient himself.

He’s standing on a corner, St. Claude and Tupelo – that’s what the street signs say – and there’s a church …

… a church.

_Drinking, fighting, clawing his way, blood hitting his face, teeth biting into a neck._

Cassidy shakes his head again but he can _smell_ it, blood on a wooden floor, no, blood and the smell of recycled air.

 _A Bible in his hand, written on, crazy stuff,_ but, no _, a Bible in someone’s hand, smashing against his face, then, in his, thrown across the room._

He pushes the heel of his palm into his eyes, slaps his temple.

_Figures in the dark, coming after him, always coming after him, hunting, blood and more blood._

Figures in the dark approaching him, one tall and one short, striding across the church parking lot, confident, certain they can take him.

He scowls; bloody gobshites, they are, always so cocky, so confident, so bleedin’ stupid. Coming at him with stakes and crosses, fucking _holy water_ and lynches. Fire.

They’re within arms reach, they’re gonna try to sweet talk him, offer him drugs, a good time, a fuck –

Heat crawls at the back of his neck, he aches, he’s hungry.

One of them reaches out and he’s at them like a rabid dog.

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up – _again_ – in a place he doesn’t recognize with faces looming over him.

Though, this time, no one’s yelling at him.

They’re not saying much of anything.

 

* * *

 

 

Tulip has a black eye and a sprained wrist.

Jesse has cracked ribs and a bloody gouge, four claw-like streaks, down his forearm. There’s a troubling bruise in the shape of a human bite on his bicep.

Cassidy has a gash on his head that is yet to stop bleeding and guilt heavy enough to weigh him down for the next century.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s staring up at the ceiling, head resting on the arm folded behind his head, gratefully lucid, when he remembers something. It must be the garish, confusing choice of the motel to have installed some seriously 70’s-level ceiling _fabric._

“You know –“ He starts but is forced to pause and clear his throat; he swallows the blood that collects instead of spitting it out because Tulip is staring at him like he is dying and, shite, he’d do just about anything to make her stop looking at him like that.

And then there’s the fading bruise under her right eye. _That_ he’ll never forgive himself for.

“I had this mate once, right – “His voice is ragged and its like talking over nails; honest, he doesn’t know how humans go on being sick all the time.

“Livin’ in his ma’s basement type, but the 70’s version of it. He was into the supernatural, when it was becomin’ a t’ing –“

“He t’ought that certain pandemics, certain illnesses were a defense mechanism against –“

He only pauses because the theory had been more involved than he is capable of explaining, than he is capable of remembering because he’d only been half listening and tripping on LSD at the time, and it had included things he – good ‘ol vampiric Cassidy – hadn’t believed in then and is still on the fence about now. Things like werewolves, shape shifters, demons, succubi, and bleedin’ telepathic dolphin people. 

He settles for something vague.

“ – t’ings like me.” Cassidy gives Tulip a small smile, one he is sure is made less comforting by the blood he can taste on his teeth.

She doesn’t smile back. She continues to sit there and listen and he knows exactly what she’s doing: collecting information – the woman is bloody brilliant and he can tell that under her stoic, controlled appearance, she’s thinking through a thousand ways to help _him_. 

He doesn’t deserve it, he _knows_ he doesn’t, but he can’t look away.

“Sounds like an interesting theory, Cass.”

“Smart bloke, that one. PhD and all that shite.” He has to clear his throat again and it hurts worse than before. He blinks hard, wonders if his eyes are going to melt out of his head and tries to remember if it had been like this before.

“What happened to him?

“The wanker tried t’ kill me with a wooden steak and a UV light –“ He laughs, as he often does over things most would consider terrible or traumatizing – honest, there is a moment, though he’s forgotten it by now, where those feelings give way to hilarity and a terrifying nonchalance - and then finds himself choking on blood, _again._  

He can feel the energy draining right out of him. He can also feel a fast and strong set of hands pull his lanky dead-weight – _ha_ – into a sitting position. The bucket is then shoved in front of him, between his legs, and suddenly his head is buried in it; he holds on to the sides and coughs, gags, far too much blood. It’s enough to make him light headed in a way only terrible bodily trauma tends to do.

Vaguely, he’s aware of the soothing circles being rubbed across his back; he focuses on that as he coughs up his lungs. That’s what’s happening – he’s pretty sure.

When it is finally over he lets out a long, morbid half-hum half-laugh.

“Y’know I can’t suffocate, right?” He groans when she cuffs him, lightly, on the back of the head – it makes him smile despite himself and he knows he’s only going to make her imminent verbal thrashing worse. Which is a terrible thing because his head is _throbbing._

He crosses his arms over the bucket, rests his head on them and spits – he’s more tired then he’s ever remembered being. “Not really, anyway.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m gonna sit here and watch you choke on your own blood, you idiot!” She yells at him, her voice is laced with anger and too loud. He tries to lift his head, can’t, and then settles for turning his head sideways.

“And I’m not sure if you’ve seen yourself lately but you _look_ like you’re dyin’,” He blinks heavily, opens his mouth to correct her, but she’s off to the races – he’s gotten her worked up and all it had taken was some choking on his own blood, “and if your _mate_ was right then you _could_ die, so stop being so damn stupid and take this seriously!”

“’m not gonna die.” He mumbles, even though he’s starting to feel a wee bit unsure about it. Her expression is painful to look at; she doesn’t look convinced, though it doesn’t show in the strong set of her lips, her relaxed brow. It’s all in her eyes – they’re bright and attentive, they’re glistening. 

“Tulip, ‘m _not.”_ He says a bit more firmly, though it does nothing for the terrible hoarseness and he still sounds shit. He manages to lift his hand and place it on top of one of her own, the one that’s not worrying over a thread on the shitty motel blanket.

“You best be right.” She says, her lips quirking as she turns his hand over, traces her thumb over one of his tattoos, the swallow they like so much. “Jesse would be devastated.”

She looks him in the eye, her features pure mischief; she’s teasing him and it makes him feel a little better.

“’s that all?” He asks innocently, his voice lilting up, equally mischievous.

“Well, I’m not about to say I’d miss the way you handle my car – “

“That was the one time – “ He complains because Tulip’s car is a feat of engineering; it’s beautiful, sure, but its fucking complicated and he’d ground the gears at least three times. He’s more of truck kind of guy anyway.

“And the _last_ time. Who taught you to drive, Cass?” She pokes a finger into his hand, a hard jab at the swallow, as if to illustrate her point.

“Would ye believe it, the wife of the bloke who’s car I was stealin’, though she’d never driven either, and it was a Model T, so –“

Tulip breaks the conversation with a sudden fit of genuine laughter and really, if there weren’t better medicine. He watches her for a moment, reminds himself to tell her the full story later – its one of his better stories - and can’t help but join; his own throaty, raspy laugh joins her own.

It’s a nice moment. Makes up for that shite at the church. Almost.

Then he’s back to coughing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> Next up: Jesse and Tulip's POV and a deal is struck with an angel.


End file.
